


Again

by AvaKelly



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, Bucky needs a hug, Dystopian Future, Falling In Love, M/M, Oblivious, Pining, Portals, Sam Needs A Hug, Time Loop, Time Travel, Ultron - Freeform, because humans are flawed, but then he sees the error of his ways, evil robots, sam's an ass without realizing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:06:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7298908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaKelly/pseuds/AvaKelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam will never be able to forget how Bucky screams when Wanda digs through his head. </p><p>Especially since she's showing Sam what Bucky's been through, on that chair, in that silo, on missions. Why she does it, Sam can't fathom, but she links them, somehow, and when she's done, Bucky looks at Sam like he was there for his entire life. Like they were both there for their entire lives.</p><p>~<br/><a href="http://buckyandsam.tumblr.com/post/145581719557/sambucky-week-2016-june-20-26-2016-whats">Day 5 of WinterFalcon Week 2016: AU</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Again

The second time Sam sees Bucky Barnes, really sees, without steering wheels or wings being ripped away from him, it's in a ratty motel, early dawn, with his breath puffing frozen in the cold winter air.

His hand shakes as he raises his gun, but his lips don't cooperate and they lift with content. Bucky's eyes crinkle at the corners as his mouth morphs into a returning smile.

"Don't move," Sam breathes, exactly what he's supposed to say.

But Bucky shifts anyway, comes to sit on the edge of the bed, and buries his forehead against the side of Sam's neck.

~

The fist time Sam sees Bucky Barnes, really sees, without steering wheels or wings being ripped away from him, it's in a ratty motel, early dawn, with his breath puffing frozen in the cold winter air.

Two days earlier, Steve got a call that the Avengers need him to hunt for a dangerous scepter that can apparently take away people's will. Not five minutes later, a lead they'd been pursuing came through and Steve didn't even have to turn the puppy eyes on Sam for Sam to know he's going after the Winter Soldier alone. It's the eighth time in two months.

Good news, the lead paid off. Bad news, he's now face to face with the assassin himself. Sam trains the gun he's been sleeping with on him while his mind insists on sparing precious thought on how long the Winter Soldier has been sitting in his room, watching Sam sleep.

"Don't move," Sam says.

It earns him a scoff and Sam scowls.

"I'm taking you in," Sam adds.

He gets a raised eyebrow for his troubles.

"You have very little confidence in my skills," the Soldier returns, voice low and raspy, like it hasn't been used in a while.

"Well I'm the one with the g--"

And now Sam is definitely not the one with the gun anymore. Damn, the man is fast. If Sam dies here, he's going to haunt Steve's ass until eternity and then some.

"Why are you here?" Sam asks, stifling the way his hands want to shake.

"Stop following me, you're distracting."

What...

" _I'm_ distracting?" Sam points a finger at himself. "I've been searching for your ass for months, and _I'm_ distracting? If anything, you're keeping me from enjoying the upscale conditions of Stark accommodations." Because yeah, once his tiny apartment got compromised, Steve set him up in there, and it might be a little too much for Sam's taste, but at least the security is tight and the food is good. And JARVIS is a dear about not telling anyone he sleeps on the floor. Stark's floor is a hundred times better than this shit motel room without heating.

"I had to take out several operatives that were after you," the Soldier returns with a glare. "You. Are. Distracting."

"I saw no operatives," Sam returns, crossing his arms.

"Because I followed you and kept them away."

Sam blinks. "Wait so, you've been following me while I was searching for you?"

Talk about wasted time. Anger bubbles up in Sam, because for one, Sam can take care of himself, and two, this entire months long ordeal could have been over a lot sooner.

"Since when?"

"Since Chicago."

That's it. That was Sam's first solo run, and it was exactly two months and three days ago.

"At least make Steve come with you," the Soldier continues.

"Fuck you!" It comes out of Sam unabated, because Sam's capable. Sam can take care of himself, thank you very much.

The Soldier presses his lips together, stares at Sam for long seconds, looming over him, and Sam's heart rabbits in his chest, both with apprehension and irritation. But then the assassin lowers the weapon, sits carefully on the edge of the bed. His face falls open, like a mask's been peeled off, and Sam swallows against the lump that forms in his throat at the sight of anguish in those blue eyes.

"Please, don't die because of me."

This is the first glimpse of Bucky Barnes that Sam sees and it rattles him to the core.

"I can take care of myself," Sam defends weakly. He doesn't want to admit it, but sometimes he feels inadequate among the Avengers and their super powered asses. Sure, Hawkeye's just as human as Sam, but Clint has his super special sight and aim. Sam only has a piece of tech he straps to his body. Well, sure, Iron Man's doing the same, but Tony's brain is one of a kind. He's not convinced Natasha's entirely human. Point is, Sam can keep up with all of them, including supersoldier and god and rage monster.

"Stay away," comes back and all of Sam's stupefaction gets swirled into a fresh wave of anger.

He pushes at Bucky's shoulder and rolls off the bed. "We're going. Now. What base are you raiding this time?"

~

To say that they argue for half an hour would be an understatement. But then Bucky relents and Sam gets shot. Just a flesh wound, in the thigh. The way Bucky looks at him with an I-told-you-so unimpressed face is only pissing Sam off more.

Bucky refuses to go back to New York with Sam, Steve mopes for about two days because he wasn't there to see Bucky himself. He could mope about Sam's wound, too, but no.

"At least now you know he's been sneaking into old SHIELD bases to search for information," Clint says.

Sam smacks the arrow shaft Clint's given him against the mattress on the gym floor. His leg still hurts too much for him to have a full workout, but this childish thing Clint's doing _with_ him is helping.

"Bases crawling with HYDRA," Clint continues. "Well, should at least make me feel better about that time I killed off my coworkers," he adds with a strangled laugh.

It's not funny, and Sam's left there staring at him. Clint's told him about what it was like under the influence of the scepter. It was cold and painless, but everything came back tenfold when he realized what he did.

"Must be worse for Bucky," Sam murmurs.

Clint sighs, leaning his shoulder against Sam's. Silence stretches slowly, and Sam's grateful for the support.

"Bucky, huh?" Clint asks after a while, smile obvious in the question.

Sam swears under his breath.

~

Everything goes to shit not another two months later. Sam's back at tracking Bucky down, while the Avengers are somewhere fighting off remnants of HYDRA in their efforts to recover the scepter. Sam doesn't even know where they are, not until Bucky runs right into them.

It happens too fast for anyone to realize what's going on until it's too late. Strucker waves the scepter and yells things at Bucky, in Russian of all things, Steve's too absorbed by the sight of his best friend to react, Natasha shoots, but she misses. Clint's arrow embeds itself into Strucker's head _after_ he stops talking.

It takes both Steve and Tony to stop the Winter Soldier from tearing through them. Clint cracks a rib and Natasha almost gets her face slashed off. Good thing Bruce wasn't here. Or bad. Sam can't tell, because an entire village is leveled.

And yet, after all of that, once Bucky regains consciousness in the quinjet, Steve's quick to forgive and forget.

Sam can't get over the fact that the time bomb that is Bucky Barnes is now living with them at the tower, dead smack in the middle of a very crowded city. Steve keeps saying that they'll find a way to deprogram him, Russian is banned from the tower, Clint's too sad to look at these days, and Tony's nowhere to be seen. Natasha is entirely unhelpful, while Bruce tries, because he knows what it's like to wake up without remembering what he did, but it's not enough. It's another month of Sam being on edge and Bucky ignoring Sam completely.

That's when it happens.

The call.

Something big and made of energy has popped up over Central Park, spewing horrendous creatures with big teeth, and they all go to fight.

Tony figures the creatures are robots twenty minutes in, and it gets easier to take them out, because their power sources are right in the center of their chests. They look suspiciously like Tony's suit, actually, but before Sam can say anything, another one comes through the portal.

This one is big, shaped more like a box, and it's running straight at Sam, high velocity. Sam doesn't even have time to spread his wings before he's knocked over and darkness surrounds him.

~

"Wakey, wakey, Samuel Wilson."

Sam blinks, the voice familiar. "Tony?" he tries. His throat is dry, mouth tastes ashy, and everything is dark around him.

"Is what they call me," comes back.

"Hey, Sam, open your eyes."

Natasha. It's hard, but finally light sifts through, gray and dull. His eyes focus slowly, along with a deep ache that resonates through his bones.

"Where..." Sam starts, but the word dies on his lips when he takes in his surroundings.

Tony's hair is white, Natasha's is shaved off, and there's a large scar over the side of her face. It looks old, decades old. Sam's lying on a ratty mattress amongst debris in a room with boarded up windows. A lamp sits in a corner, one of those military ones, all banged up and dim.

"We're in the future," comes from behind Sam in Bucky's voice.

Sam turns to see Bucky there, crouched on the mattress, his gun raised at these Tony and Natasha that Sam doesn't recognize. It almost look like Bucky's been protecting Sam... but nah. Bucky doesn't even tell Sam good morning. Given, Sam's been an ass to him, but still. If he were in Bucky's shoes right now, he'd have left Sam to the wolves. Maybe.

Ugh, his head is pounding.

~

Turns out they really _are_ in the future. Thirty years forward to be exact.

The world looks like hell. Literally.

There are armies upon armies of evil robots trying to kill every single human they find.

Sam lowers the binoculars he's been using to look at the Stark Tower in the distance. It's the headquarters of the entity that's controlling these robots. Tony and Natasha's camp is safely on the outskirts of what's left of New York. They've been fighting for a long time, but they're slowly losing the war. Food is scarce, water undrinkable, and the air is hard to breathe. Humanity will be extinct in a year, if not less.

"How did we get here?" Bucky asks.

"We brought you," Tony tells them.

Sam's first reaction is strangle now, ask questions later, but Bucky's fingers on his wrist stop him.

"Why?" Bucky asks again.

"It's the only solution, we ran as many simulations as we could," Tony non-answers and Sam sighs.

"We want to send you back," Natasha intervenes, "so you can stop this from happening. Look, we had over twenty years to find out why this happened," she continues with a wave of her arm at the destruction around them. "It all started when Strucker activated Bucky's programming in Sokovia. The family of a man named Zemo died then. He managed to steal the scepter from us two years later and he used it to trick Tony into creating Ultron."

At this, Tony sniffs and sits heavily on a crate, head in his hands.

Sam raises an eyebrow while Bucky frowns.

"Long story short," Natasha says, "Ultron is a computer program, very advanced, that was supposed to protect the world. It decided that humanity's worst enemy is humanity itself. It is the one that's controlling these robots, it is the one that's hunting us."

"It attacked New York in the past."

Natasha shakes her head. "Sorry about that, we had to open a portal, and the bleed through was unavoidable."

Sam shakes his head. "I'm hallucinating. I got hit in the head and now I'm in a coma."

A huff, and Natasha's mouth lifts sideways in that particular way she smiles at Sam's rants while they watch action movies together.

"You need to go back and avoid being triggered," she turns to Bucky.

Yeah, that makes sense. "Why am I here?" Sam asks.

"You're plan B," Natasha replies.

Bucky nods next to Sam. "Good plan, take me out before this happens."

His fingers burn where they're wrapped around Sam's wrist. He's been pissed at Bucky, but not enough to want to kill the guy. Far from it.

"We already know you hate Bucky, so it shouldn't be hard for you," Tony adds.

All blood freezes in Sam's veins. He doesn't _hate_ Bucky. No, he's just... fuck, do they all think that?

"He'll do it," Bucky says and Sam tears his wrist away from his grip.

"Good," Natasha returns before Sam can say anything. "We'll send you back before the Event, but we can't control the timeframe with precision, so it will be between one and six months ahead."

"I can be killed at arrival, then," Bucky says and Sam shudders. How can he...

"No, we need the scepter. Time continuum, Tony's better at explaining this."

Tony waves a hand tiredly from where he's sitting. "Later. You need to find the scepter and make sure all events leading up to that moment stay the same. We ran calculations."

"How can you ensure I won't be triggered again and this won't repeat?" Bucky returns.

Natasha wiggles her fingers to the side and a figure shuffles closer. It's a woman, red hair long and matted, clothes ripped and dirty. Her eyes are red, cheeks gaunt and it hurts Sam to look at her. At least Natasha and Tony seem like they have been washing their faces once a week. This woman has an arm wrapped around herself, the fingers of the other bleeding a red mist into the air.

"This is Wanda, she can remove the programming."

Bucky nods, taking a step closer.

"Now wait a minute," Sam says.

Wanda is gone in a fraction of a second.

"She's shy," Tony sighs, raising to his feet. "Why don't you talk it over. If you don't wanna do it, you can stay here and die with us. I'll show you back to the room, it's getting dark, we need to be inside."

When Sam looks over at Natasha, she shrugs. Sam's never seen her so defeated before.

~

Sam paces the small space while Bucky sits cross legged on the mattress. He's way too calm for their situation.

"Are you really going to let her fuck with your head? You don't even know her."

It's the third time Sam's said that and the third time Bucky's ignored him.

"Why won't you talk to me?" Sam grits, frustrated. Now is not the time for childish grudges.

"I'm _allowed_ to?" Bucky returns, finally looking at Sam.

Sam scowls. "What the hell do you mean you're allowed to?"

"You said it yourself. Never to speak to you again. I'm abiding by your wishes."

"What are you talking about?"

Bucky raises slowly to his feet, and he speaks in a very dull, very quiet monotone. "Man, I got shot because of you, I hate you so fucking much, never speak to me again."

He's repeating words that Sam might have said while bleeding from his thigh, more than angry, mostly at himself. Words that Sam _did_ say. And Sam stills.

No, no, no. Sam didn't mean it like that.

"You keep telling everyone how much you hate me. You never let me forget that I got you hurt. You never even let me apologize." Bucky blinks, and Sam must be imagining the wetness glinting in his eyes. "Clint says you'll come around, but you never..."

With a headshake, Bucky stops himself, turns away.

Sam tries to say no, that's not true, and sorry, but the words refuse to form.

"No, you know what," Bucky continues, turning around, "I'm done being quiet. Steve keeps nagging at me like a broken record. Talk to him, you'll regret it, look at me and Peggy, can't wait seven decades." Bucky snorts. "Fucking kettle."

A beat, and Bucky is suddenly so close, that Sam can see the darker bits of blue swimming against a pale background in Bucky's irises.

"I might die tomorrow, we both might," Bucky says, low and guttural, raising goosebumps on Sam's skin. "So here it is. I'm in love with you, fuck knows why or when it happened, 'cos I didn't approve. But it's real."

And he turns, walks over to the mattress and plops down on it.

No, Sam's heard it wrong.

What...

But.

And sometimes Bucky is making them breakfast, and it's exactly what Sam likes, and there's always a new book on his nightstand, and Sam really loves the suggestions, and Bucky's always sitting close, and Sam's never felt this safe in anyone's presence before... but...

"What," he rasps.

"Wow," Bucky lifts his left wrist, mock-checking his non-existent watch, "took you a whole five minutes to react to that."

"Fu--"...ck you, Sam wants to say, but he stops himself. This is not the time, and he pushes away at everything, because even though Bucky's words carry a bite, Bucky looks miserable. In pain.

Almost like he did when he asked Sam, in that freezing motel room, to stop putting himself in danger.

Oh. Oh... fuck.

"I don't hate you," he manges, lips numb.

Bucky looks at him like he doesn't believe Sam. That's what Sam gets for being an ass and treating Bucky like crap.

"I swear, I don't," he breathes. "I don't know why I kept saying it. You piss me off so much sometimes."

At that, Bucky's face falls and Sam raises both palms.

"No, no, I mean not you, but the whole thing. I don't even know why..." Sam bites his lip. Thinking back, his behavior has been entirely childish and Sam feels a lot like a moron. "Look, I'm stupid ok?"

That earns him a glare as Bucky crosses his arms. "You're not stupid," he mutters.

"I am," Sam rolls his eyes at himself. "I'm really sorry," he adds, hoping it comes off as sincere as it is.

"You really don't hate me?" Bucky returns, and Sam doesn't imagine the spark of hope that lights up his face, only to be immediately stifled.

"I don't," Sam confirms.

Bucky nods, shifts to rest his elbows on his knees. He's engrossed in staring at his own fingers, and Sam doesn't know what he's expected, but this isn't it. Bucky has just confessed love for Sam, for fuck's sake, and all Sam's given him is this. Sitting there, only a little less miserable than before.

Love is... love shouldn't be painful, for anyone. Sam remembers losing it and it wasn't pretty.

He takes a step closer, then another, until he can kneel in front of Bucky.

"If we live through this, I'll do it," he says.

Bucky looks up with a frown. "Do what?"

"I'll be with you."

It takes a few beats, but finally it seems to dawn on Bucky what Sam is saying. He shakes his head, a small smile on his face, even though it's sadder than it should be.

Yeah, Sam hasn't thought this through.

"I'll settle for a hug," Bucky rasps.

This, this he can do, and Sam nods before he wraps himself around Bucky.

~

Sam will never be able to forget how Bucky screams when Wanda digs through his head.

Especially since she's _showing_ Sam what Bucky's been through, on that chair, in that silo, on missions. Why she does it, Sam can't fathom, but she links them, somehow, and when she's done, Bucky looks at Sam like he was there for his entire life. Like they were both there for their entire lives.

It's unnerving.

And when Bucky rubs at the scar on Sam's shoulder blade, the one he got when Riley fell out of the sky, he knows. Bucky's seen him as well.

~

The travel through the portal hurts like a bitch, but they land relatively safely on the roof of a building. There's a sniper rifle at the edge, Washington DC stretching out around them. Bucky inspects the nest, looks through the scope.

"This is where I shot Nick Fury," he says.

Sam chokes. "We're back too far," he manages. "You have to--"

The look Bucky turns at him stops everything in a big lump in his throat.

"I'll do it," Bucky says. "And I'll see you at the motel. Go."

Sam finds himself shaking his head.

But then Bucky fires, and then Steve's running after him, while Sam hides behind a skylight. Bucky is gone and Sam has no choice but to follow the events as they happened the first time around.

~

The bastard smirks at him as he rips Sam's wings for a second time.

"You owe me a new car, too," Sam mutters after him.

~

Well, in the end Steve still gets shot and Bucky still disappears after the Triskelion crumbles to pieces.

Only now Sam knows where he is. It takes him all he has not to go straight to Bucky, not to tell the Avengers where the scepter is.

Two months later, he's vibrating by the time Steve gets the second call, the one that sends Sam to that motel. Yet he still manages to dose off, right before dawn. He startles awake again.

His hand shakes as he raises his gun, but his lips don't cooperate and they lift with content. Bucky's eyes crinkle at the corners as his mouth morphs into a returning smile.

"Don't move," Sam breathes, exactly what he's supposed to say.

But Bucky shifts anyway, comes to sit on the edge of the bed, and buries his forehead against the side of Sam's neck.

"I missed you," he says.

Sam slumps against him, dropping his weapon. "Missed you, too," he murmurs, wrapping his arms around Bucky.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Do you still hate me?" Bucky asks, but there's humor in the question.

"Only a little bit," Sam returns.

"I bought you a new car."

Laughter bubbles out of Sam unabated. "You didn't."

"Not yet," Bucky says as he leans back, "but I will."

His eyes are open, bright and lively, much more than the first time they were in this room together. It's breathtakingly fascinating. Sam looks away before he does something stupid.

"We have half an hour," he says, eyes falling to the clock on the nightstand. "What do you wanna do before we go to have me shot in the leg?"

Bucky pats Sam's thigh where the scar from the wound still mars his skin.

"Sleep?" Bucky says. There are dark circles under his eyes, Sam remembers them from the first time around.

So he does the best thing he can. He lies back down, pulling Bucky along, and doesn't think too much about what it means.

~

Strucker shouts the code words and Sam watches Bucky stagger from his perch on the nearby rooftop. His wings are too slow in opening, Natasha takes her shot and misses, Clint lines up an arrow... and Bucky points his gun at Steve.

His bullets hit Steve, one in the shoulder while the other grazed his temple, the first time.

Now, though, Bucky drops the weapon. His grin is triumphant as he turns it to Sam, and Sam scrambles to land next to him, heart rabbiting in his chest.

Chaos erupts around them before Sam can say anything.

Bucky is brought to the tower while Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are rescued from Strucker's experiments.

Of course, Clint immediately takes a shine to the kids. Two weeks pass between debriefs, interrogations, and Tony's lawyers fending every possible three letter agency off.

"Hello, again," Wanda tells Sam as she shuffles into the kitchen. More like floats, thats' how quiet she is.

"Hi," he says, then turns his attention back to his pan filled with sizzling eggs. They're not as good as Bucky's, but Bucky is out for a flight with Steve to check out Brooklyn for some memories.

"You should love him this time, it always ends better when you do," she whispers, and Sam startles, twists on his heels.

"What?"

Wanda frowns. "What."

"What'd you say just now?"

"I didn't say anything," but she's lying, Sam can see apprehension in her eyes, like she _knows_.

"I'm not going anywhere with you, ever again," Steve's voice resounds as he walks in, covered in stink and more than a few pieces of fish guts.

Behind him, Bucky follows, laughter shaking his frame.

"You're back early," Sam says.

Bucky saves Sam's eggs from burning, Steve complains for what seems like forever, before he decides to go shower, ew Steve, and when Sam looks around, Wanda is nowhere. Hm, he must have imagined it.

But he surely isn't imagining his heart skipping a beat at the way Bucky smiles.

~

Sam stops next to Bucky on the balcony of the tower's penthouse. In the distance, Central Park sits undisturbed under the mid day sun.

"No portal," Sam says. "We must have changed the future."

Bucky nods.

"Thirty years from tomorrow," Bucky starts and Sam stills, "I told you I love you and you let me. Thank you for pretending," he breathes, while Sam's heart pounds against his ribs. "I'll move out of your room tonight."

And just like that, it dawns on Sam.

They've been sleeping in the same bed ever since Strucker was taken out and the scepter recovered. They've been _together_ -together.

Without the kissing and the naked bits, but still together.

They're holding hands, even now, and it feels so natural, that Sam hasn't even registered doing it.

"Please don't," he hurries to say, squeezing Bucky's fingers.

A beat, and Bucky opens his mouth.

"Tell me again," Sam speaks before Bucky can.

The seconds stretch, long and too slow, and Bucky breathes in. "I love you," he whispers.

"I love you, too," Sam returns, just as low.

~

Sam remembers all of Bucky's life. Especially how it felt to Bucky to love Sam and be met with hate-you's at every turn.

So he does everything he can to make up for that. With kisses and pecks, love-you's and be-careful's, good-morning's and good-night's.

Again, and again, and again, and again.

~~

Bucky sits at the kitchen table across from Wanda while Pietro hums to himself as he rushes around making breakfast.

"He loves you again," she comments, eyes fixated on the tablet in her hands. "Make sure you keep him alive this time."

"Yes, let's keep the man that resets the loop alive for more than five minutes," Pietro comments. "Let's keep _me_ alive for more than five minutes."

Bucky growls at him.

"Boys," Wanda warns. "We have thirty years again until we have to start over. Let's use them wisely. Be happy, you earned it," she turns a smile at Bucky.

"I'll try," he rasps.

It's been sixty two lifetimes. Some resets he manages to make everything last thirty years, but others he can't. Like last time, when Wanda had to pull both him and Sam ahead. They can always rely on Tony or Bruce to build the time device. This time Sam remembers jumping around through time, but when he dies, Bucky has to start over, pretend Sam's a strangers, try to reconnect.

Sam strides in, smile on his lips, and Bucky's mouth matches the mirth there.

He feels like this one will be a happy life, before they have to do it all over again.

~End~


End file.
